THE TRUTH ABOUT TWITTER: Half Of Twitter Users Never Listen To A Word Anyone Else Says

First, only 8% of American adults use Twitter.
This is more evidence that, despite its enormous popularity among
tech and media folks--and its massive global user
numbers--Twitter has
yet to go mainstream.

Second, fully half of these Twitter users basically never
listen to a word anyone else says. In other words, half
of Twitter users use Twitter as a sort of digital closet that
they go into once in a while to mutter to themselves, with no one
else listening.

Third, less than a quarter of Twitter users, meanwhile,
or 2% of American adults, are heavy Twitter users, using
Twitter the way many tech and media folks do: Obsessively
checking it several times a day to watch the news go by.

If Twitter's goal is to become the world's biggest media company,
these trends need to change. More people need to start using
Twitter to consume media, not just tout it or create it.
The service's user growth is phenomenal, but it's hard to build a
big business around people talking to themselves.

(Of course, that said, much of what big traditional media
companies do is talk to themselves with no one listening, so
perhaps this isn't such a problem after all).

Here are some other cool facts from the Pew study:

72% of Twitter users in our sample say that they post updates
related to their personal life, activities or interests. A total
of one-in-five Twitter users (19%) say they post personal updates
once a day or more.

62% of those we queried said they post updates related to
their work life, activities or interests, with 12% doing so on a
daily basis.

55% of these Twitter users share links to news stories. About
one in ten (12%) do this at least once a day.

54% of these Twitter users say they post humorous or
philosophical observations about life in general, with 16% doing
so on a daily basis.

53% of these Twitter users use Twitter to retweet material
posted by others, with 18% doing so on a daily basis.

52% of these Twitter users send direct messages to other
users, with 11% doing so on a daily basis.

40% use Twitter to share photos with others, with 12% going
so at least once a day.

28% use Twitter to share videos with others. Fewer than
one-in-ten Twitter users (8%) do this once a day or more.

24% use the service to tweet their location, with 7% of users
doing so on a daily basis.